Author: David Clary (Page 6 of 6)

The Literary Life of the Island

I was so fortunate to have my first-ever book event at Warwick’s, a wonderful independent bookstore in the heart of La Jolla, on Monday night. I’ve been going to Warwick’s for years and it consistently hosts events for great authors like Salman Rushdie and David Sedaris yet also makes an effort to support local authors. The employees were so gracious to me and my family, and I know it was a special night none of us will forget.

Warwick’s always places books and event info in the store’s front window.

I was glad to talk about my book and answer so many well-informed questions from the audience.

It’s fun signing books!

Those of us who are still practicing journalism know all too well the economic battering the industry has taken over the last decade. Despite it all, there is tremendous journalism being committed every day by newspapers, magazines and online-only outlets. For a weekly roundup of the best of the best, I heartily recommend subscribing to The Sunday Long Read newsletter. It’s free and it’ll land in your inbox before you’ve finished brewing your cup of coffee on Sunday mornings. It focuses on notable “longform” pieces written by masters of the form like Ta-Nehisi Coates, but also mixes in shorter stories on politics, sports, pop culture.  I tend to take all week to read it!

Visit here to subscribe.

All authors will be able to relate to the struggles of navigating the publishing world as described by Anjali Enjeti in her piece this week in The Atlantic. She has tried without success for 10 years to get a book deal, even though she has written for nationally known publications. It is indeed a maddening process for a first-timer without what they call a “platform.” First you need to get a literary agent, which I found to be like applying for a job at companies where there are no openings. It took me about two years, dozens of boilerplate rejections, scores of ignored follow-up emails before I signed with my current agent. The book deal happened a few months later.

No one likes rejection (though I think it’s even worse to be ignored), but I did learn from the few agents that took time to read my proposal and offer critiques about my work. I did a radical overhaul of the manuscript after talking with a very thoughtful agent who I didn’t end up signing with, and I think I ended up with a better book as a result. I’m sure writing groups and conferences can also be helpful, though I’ve never gone down those paths.  The trick, as in anything, knowing how to discern what advice to accept and what to discard.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/09/why-im-still-trying-to-get-a-book-deal-after-10-years/539115/

For anyone who’d like some advice or perhaps inspiration on how to write better, I recommend subscribing to a weekly newsletter called Writing Routines. They interview an author or journalist about how they go about their jobs and what you learn is that everyone has their own way except for one essential thing: Coffee!

Coffee. Classical Music. Construction-Grade Earmuffs. Here’s How Some of the World’s Great Writers Begin Their Workdays.

Saturday’s inaugural San Diego Festival of Books at Liberty Station was a heartening testament to the power of the written word in our community. More than 50 authors — most from San Diego County — appeared on panels and signed books. Local bookstores and presses were well-represented and all of the booths I visited were busy. I’m so pleased that my employer, The San Diego Union-Tribune, co-sponsored the event along with KPBS. Here’s hoping the Festival of Books continues to thrive in the years ahead.

Robert Caro works on a Smith Corona Electra 210 (and lots of notepads) in his office in New York City. (Photo from Writers and their Typewriters, http://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html)

I’ve always been fascinated by how writers write. Robert Caro, the author of the great series of books about Lyndon Johnson, still writes exclusively on a typewriter as does David McCullough, another favorite writer of mine. Some write in longhand on legal pads, others use a desktop computer without an Internet connection to avoid distractions, and many write on laptops in coffeeshops. It took some time to figure out what worked for me. (I did know that it wasn’t going to be a typewriter.) I found that I liked sketching out ideas and chapter outlines by hand because if you cross something out, it’s easily salvageable, unlike on a computer. I did all of the heavy-duty writing on our aging iMac in our bedroom where I had access to all of my books and research materials. (I’ve never had a laptop and I don’t think I’d feel comfortable writing on one.) I need quiet when writing, but background noise or music is welcome if I’m doing something that requires less focus. I did all of my editing on paper and kept hard copies of drafts. One my biggest fears was losing my work to a sudden computer meltdown, so I kept multiple electronic copies as backups. I’m interested in hearing about your writing process, so please share!

When people found out I was writing a book about gambling, many wondered “why gambling?” Good question, given that I’m not much a gambler myself. I play the slots a few times a year at our local tribal-run casinos, maybe lay down a bet at a casino sportsbook if I happen to be in Las Vegas, and spend a day every year or so at the beautiful Del Mar Racetrack, but that’s about it. Yet I have always been fascinated by the drama of casinos and other betting arenas. My parents took me to Las Vegas for the first time at age 15 and I remember driving for hours through the barren desert and being thunderstruck at the sudden appearance of a neon city. I saw desperation, excitement, boredom, frustration fueled by the promise of getting something for nothing.

When I moved to San Diego about 15 years ago, I was surprised to learn that there were 10 or so casinos in the county because there were no legal casinos in the places where I had lived. I was curious about how happened and why they were in mostly remote backcountry areas. I started doing some reading on the subject and felt like the books weren’t answering my questions to my satisfaction. That coincided with a nationwide gambling boom and my reading led me to organized crime titans like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and fascinating figures like Howard Hughes, Bill Harrah and Steve Wynn. I loved exploring how something illicit became legitimate, which is one of the major themes of the book.

Working on the book reawakened my love of research. My goal was to approach the project with the fairness of a journalist and the rigor of a scholar. For the first time in more than a decade, I spent considerable time on college campuses and remembered how much I enjoyed their energy. In San Diego County, we are lucky to have world-class universities, top-shelf city and county library systems, and extremely helpful librarians and archivists. It would have been impossible to do this book without them.

I recently boxed up my research materials to make way for the next project, and I found that they filled two large bins. (Not pictured are the hundreds of digital documents and bookmarks.) Photo by David Clary.

I spent two intensive but happy research stints inside this building, the Lied Library at UNLV. The library houses an excellent special collection on gambling history freely accessible to independent researchers. (There’s also a Coffee Bean on the first floor, which is a nice touch.) Photo by David Clary.

I decided in late 2010 to explore the idea of writing a book, a risky endeavor since I hadn’t even had a byline since college. I’ve often thought of it as resolving to run a marathon even though the longest race you’ve ever run was a 5K more than a decade ago. Why do it? I love being an editor, but I found that I missed writing for an audience. Editing is kind of like writing from the inside out, so I slowly discovered that I had to radically reorient my brain when working on the book. I had to shush the editor in me trying to make everything perfect on the first go-around. Writing is so hard because writing is thinking. But the pleasure derived from an idea exquisitely expressed is matchless.